Why you really can't always believe what you read in the news…

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Women spend 13 hours finding the perfect Christmas present for husbands… who only spend FOUR hours on them in return

Christmas might be a time of giving, but it seems women are spending more time pondering what exactly to give than men are. At least when it comes to those who have children.

Mothers dedicate 13 hours and 23 minutes to choosing their partner the perfect presents, while fathers are only willing to spend four hours and 10 minutes on the task.

Perhaps as a result, over half of mothers (57 per cent) confess to being disappointed with Christmas gifts given by their husbands or boyfriends, and a quarter of them are now frantically dropping hints so as not to risk another poor show this year.

Christmas is just around the corner, and with it comes the opportunity to shower your special someone with affection, attention, and (most importantly) gifts. However, some of us are better at buying gifts than others – with men bringing up the rear, present-wise, due to their naturally lazy and unthoughtful nature.

It’s actually quite a shame that men are so unequivocally useless, given how much effort women put into Christmas. Men ought to be ashamed of themselves, and ought to find some kind of way to raise their game when it comes to shopping for gifts…

Even more depressingly, one in ten women will be expected to wrap all of the presents that go under the tree… even their own, according to a survey of 1,000 mums and dads by Littlewoods…

To help men out, Littlewoods have compiled a list of what mothers really want, and it’s topped with jewellery, perfume and handbags.

Oh, thank god for that then! Thank you, Littlewoods, for coming up with the perfect solution to the problem your own research convinced us exists.

It was a stereotype two-for-one in the Daily Mail recently, with the pair of equally-insulting ideas that women are bossy control freaks and men are incapable of making themselves remotely presentable:

Two thirds of women will try to change a new partner’s appearance (and it only takes six months to morph him into Mr Right)

Women seeking the perfect partner are not looking for Mr Right – they want to find the man they can turn into Mr Right.

Two-thirds of women admit trying to transform their boyfriend’s appearance, a study reveals.

They buy £500 worth of clothes and spend more than six months buffing and grooming their man – often to make him look more like their favourite celebrity.

More than a third (36 per cent) admit they were ‘embarrassed and ashamed’ to be seen in public with their boyfriend at the start of their relationship.

Were this genuine research, it may be worth speculating as to why the women in question would be dating men they were ashamed to be seen with – but we won’t do that, because that’s precisely what the PR team behind this story want you to do. Even counteracting nonsense in an article helps perpetuate the conversation, keeping the original article in the news or social media cycle.

As with so many Bad PR stories, the main message is the brand name in the story; the content is merely the delivery mechanism. I genuinely can’t stress that enough – if you take one thing away from my blog, let it be that fact.

So, if discussing and dissecting the content of an article is often playing into the hands of the team who seeded the story in the first place, how do we counteract this kind of PR? Simple: by making it transparent. These stories exist only to get a brand name into the press without being as obvious as an advert; therefore their power can be taken away by highlighting that they really are nothing more than advertising. Specifically, in this case, for a clothing retailer:

Gary Kibble, from online retailer Littlewoods.com, which surveyed 2,000 women, said: ‘It definitely shows the high standards we set for ourselves and the expectations we have for our relationships.’

Littlewoods, the catalogue and online retailer, think it’s absolutely fine to sell clothing by perpetuating the stereotype of women changing their men, with the associated idea that a man can and should be ‘changed’ (even changed into ‘Mr Right’, as the article states). How much that means for women who feel their man isn’t ‘right’ is something to be debated elsewhere, as is the patronising notion that men aren’t ‘right’ unless they meet certain standards. Insulting stereotypes cut both ways, to the benefit of neither.

Still, they might help Littlewoods shift a few extra pairs of chinos, so it’s all OK – right?

With the task of making women feel conscious about their bodies never far from the pages of the mainstream newspapers, at least this story is aimed at making women feel positive about their weight, right? Well, perhaps not everyone may think so:

Indeed, the research found 52 per cent of size six women would like to be curvier.

Even with starting point that women who are size six ‘would like to be curvier’, it’s still a stretch to say that women who are size 16 are most comfortable in their skin. Still, at least they have good, positive role models:

It seems they would rather look like celebrity chef Nigella Lawson or pop star Beyonce, who top the list of curvy celebrities women most admired.

That would be the famously-size-16 singer Beyoncé, there.

So, which company is currently patronising women in the press?

Gary Kibble, Retail Brand Director at Littlewoods.com, said: ‘It’s great to see curvier real women are feeling empowered to embrace their body shape and feel good too.

‘We’ve seen full-figured celebrities are confidently gracing the red carpet…

‘…At Littlewoods.com, we understand it’s important for women to feel happy in their appearance.’